Microsoft PR: Looking Under The Hood 389
mtr writes "An interesting article uncovering some embarassing and amusing PR practices of our friendly software giant had been recently published by Michael Zalewski. The author recovered change tracking information from all the DOCs published on microsoft.com, and came up with something to cheer you up. It's funny when it happens to others - but even better if it fires back on themselves.
Read the full story here."
Cue Lawyers! (Score:5, Insightful)
Embarassing not (Score:5, Insightful)
Tool? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod Parent Up (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not very interesting, and reveals almost no new information. It's just more tired old drivel designed to embarass Microsoft and generate another flame-war.
Slashdot has long become a sad parody of itself nowadays.
Re:Cue Lawyers! (Score:3, Insightful)
To do anything about this site now would probably draw the attention of people who don't read
However now that
I bet they wait a few days until something more mainstream runs the link before they take any action. When they take action they will be firing all cannons though.
Some of the conclusions are dubious (Score:5, Insightful)
For example xxxx CEO of blah said yyyy
may simply be the result of the employee drawing up the report not knowing the full name or title of the person who made the statement.
As for exact facts and figures about a customer being included, this looks like they got asked not to include them, or decided against it, and complied.
Where's the story here? There's plenty of more interesting things that go on. This is just pure MS bashing. Bashing any company you dislike for genuinely bad business practices this way is a fantastic way to come across as a lunatic with a chip on your shoulder, but not a good way to be taken seriously when pointing out a company's flaws.
This is what a PDF is for (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess Microsft thinks its better to ignore the problem than solve it, if the solution is not yours. What's the worst that could happen? ;)
Thats what you get for bad design... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stunts gone wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no spoon. (Score:5, Insightful)
While it is certainly possible to ascribe less than pure motives to all the instances documented in the story, if one applies Occam's razor, one can come up with a simpler but not as interesting explanation : this is the way big business works. In a multi-national corporation, different people collaborate. They have different personalities, and some are more antagonistic than others. Some people are asked to produce marketing materials and others are asked to review them for factual accuracy. Ultimately, before a document is published, several reviewers will go through it, and it would be shocking if edits were not made.
For example, the first example talks about changing the "deploying" to "evaluating". What exactly is damning about this? Perhaps when the marketing material was written, Aventis had plans to deploy and this got changed later. Or maybe, there are some reasons why Aventis, even though it is actually deploying, may not actually want their names used as a reference for the tablet PC. There are a million and one innocuous (sp?) reasons why the change was made, but yeah, they arent as fascinating as the interpretation made on the site.
Another example - the Robbie Bach / Sandy Duncan mixup. Organizational chains are quite tangled in large corporations and can change quite frequently. The author might simply not have had the right information on who was actually in charge - especially if both were Senior Vice Presidents and connected with XBox.
Re:Cue Lawyers! (Score:4, Insightful)
So if you want THAT bit of history, best get it soon.
Re:Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)
You didn't get his.
These aren't the quotes you're looking for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some of the conclusions are dubious (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that a company has been caught out fabricating quotes by its own insecure document formats. Is this proof that they are evil incarnate? Maybe not. Is it embarassing for them? Yes. Is it amusing? Yes.
Re:Some of the conclusions are dubious (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:These aren't the quotes you're looking for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then what the newspaper is doing isn't journalism, it's advertising.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
However, if he does possess all of these skills (i.e. is a natural leader), he would be well-advised to make use of them. Not only will his employees appreciate the honesty and ability, but clients, constituents, etc. will, too. Everyone responds better to candid PR than to packaged and polished lip service. Packaged PR carries a lower standard of truth.
A leader should always be held accountable for consequences. Some situations may call for delegation, but overall that leader must be intimately familiar with his domain. That's what management and leadership are all about, and that's why they get paid the big bucks.
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:3, Insightful)
I would hope that people who read about this think " I wonder if anything compromising is in my documents". Perhaps then they will begin to realize that for all it's abilities there are risks to using office. Perhaps they will seek out other options.
So i guess what I am saying is that while this article is a silly anti-microsoft writeup on the surface, on closer inspection, it is still anti-microsoft, but adresses an extremely important privacy issue in a product which many people rely on daily.
Re:About the exec quotes (Score:4, Insightful)
And did you actually think anyone reads those press releases? Given the realities of the process, a more productive use of time would be to count grains of sand at the beach with a boxing glove.
Re:Pining... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is, unless you are Microsoft, whose apps essentially become part of the OS when installed, it could still be almost that simple today. It's absurd that you need special apps to make up for the fact that uninstall programs often just fail (ORK? Norton Antivirus?)
Script kiddies can have a field day now... (Score:2, Insightful)
If someone reads the article, they would now know that:
Home Depot uses/did use: "Windows for 8,200 Windows desktops, 42,000 Windows embedded for POS devices, 1,000 licenses of Visio, 1,000 licenses of Project, 200 Windows Servers"
Metro C&C (major German retailer): uses/did use "8,000 Windows XP(e) clients, 8,000 SQL CALs, 8,000 Windows 2000 Server CALs, 320 SQL Servers and 320 Windows 2000 Servers"
and
Ameritrade: "on 5 Windows 2000 servers. This deployment is scheduled to expand to hundreds of Windows 2000 servers."
---
I'm not suggesting anything, of course. But I think CIOs, CTOs, etc need to THINK before they let anyone know what kind of installation base they have.
Want to tell us what brand and version of firewall you have installed too? So... Are you using those fancy Cisco routers that this newly released program can fiddle with? How do you transfer data between locations?.. FTP?
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:5, Insightful)
>> no new information
May not be interesting to you, but I enjoyed the read.
Why do you complain about this, when it would take less effort to close the browser?
It's like those people that complain about things they don't like but really don't affect them. Take the old^H^H^Hpeople who complain to the FCC about Howard Stern. If they're that offended, why do they continue to list? Turn the station.
Tip to parent: Try the back button if you don't like what you see.
Is using speechwriters dishonest, too? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some CEOs ARE clueless and stupid about their own products, but the practice of having a writer show how to pitch an idea which is being sold to the public is not dishonest. To say it is shows a gross misunderstanding of how ideas are sold in EVERY part of life.
Re:Embarassing not (Score:4, Insightful)
Correction: The majority of PR people are paid to present the positive side of the truth regarding their company. PR people are not paid to present the negative side of the story unless the press has already found out about it.
Re:About the exec quotes (Score:4, Insightful)
This probably sounds naive to most of you, but I really think such practices are deceiving. Many people know that this is happening, and for those it doesn't help anyway, since they see right through it. Other people are not aware of those practices, and for them it's just lying.
Re:His Name is "Michal" (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux-based systems are much more subject to hacker attacks than systems built on the Microsoft solution for Windows Web hosting(support on file?)
The point you Linux fanboys are missing in your frenzy to publicly jerk off over relatively boring internal discussions is that they're at least interested in important questions like whether they're making apples-to-apples comparisons and whether they have supporting documentation on file.
You may disagree with their message and methods, or with their conclusions, and you probably won't even concede the validity of their definition of "apples-to-apples", but this is far more responsible than a great deal of the raw bullshit which is accepted as fact 24x7 here on slashdot, and certainly more responsible than Microsoft is ever given credit for around here.
2 Steps: 1) Write complete fantasy. 2) Fact check. (Score:3, Insightful)
What is important is not that someone at Microsoft is interested in fact-checking. That's obvious; they don't want to get fired.
What is important is that these examples show clearly how Microsoft's evaluation of itself comes into being. First, someone who knows nothing about technical matters, and absolutely does not care about technical matters, quickly writes a complete fantasy. Then the fantasy is sent to some people who have a clue, who eventually eliminate the worst of the inventions.
The examples show that the fantasy writers have very little contact with anyone with technical knowledge. Otherwise they would start the fantasies a little closer to the truth, and save some editing cycles.
Have employees who understand the company, or die. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a very serious issue. Companies that employ enough people who actually understand the business of the company have a chance to survive and prosper. Companies who try to use cheaper, poorly educated employees, die. The death may happen slowly, and is usually difficult to see because of energetic attempts to hide the truth, but the death occurs. (Novell - now apparently rebuilding -, Harvard Graphics, Word Perfect Corporation, Corel, PowerSoft and many, many others are examples.)
Microsoft's numerous recent public relations mistakes, like its stupid attack on Open Office, show it is dying.
I am not intending to be anti-Microsoft when I say this. It would be best for me personally if Microsoft were a strong, healthy company. I and many, many people suffer when Microsoft is abusive or sloppy.
Don't overlook the complexities of this. It is possible for healthy processes and sick processes to be operating at the same time in the same company. It is impossible for a company on the way down to remake itself.
Re:About the exec quotes (Score:3, Insightful)
In my view, there is very much difference. And why? What is really the point of doing that? Is it really so much better to write 'The CEO was quoted saying this new product will leverage blah blah blah' instead of just 'This new product will leverage blah blah blah'? Especially if everybody who reads it knows there is no difference between the two?